Tuesday 17 July 2012

Download Festival - Metallica


METALLICA

Metallica are Metallica, and we are mere mortals!
A long awaited set from the metal heroes, with a promise to play the classic ‘Black Album’ back to back.
They (of course) did not disappoint, hitting the stage with an interesting opener. ‘Hit The Lights’ is a song that dates right back to Metallica’s creation in the early 80’s, following up with ‘Master of Puppets’ and ‘Four Horsemen’. Making for an excellent build up to the treat the band had in store for us. 
A curious decision to play their self title album not in the original order, but who really cares what order we hear them in? The songs had a real good feel; especially those we haven’t been blessed with hearing live for many years. Stick some impressive solos and an inspiring connection with the crowd and we have a performance that’s going to be remembered for many years to come. Especially as we are now all part of ‘Metallica’s family’, which James Hetfield felt the need to remind us of...a lot!
Now let’s be honest, not many rate Metallica’s Black Album as one of the greats, yes it is amazing, but also a little hit or miss with songs and this was made pretty obvious with the crowd reactions throughout the set, people seemingly saving themselves for the big songs on this album, which (conveniently) playing the album backwards meant these songs were saved for the later part of the set. Therefore when the big number came, my word they were good! The huge ‘Holier Than Thou’, ‘The Unforgiven’, ‘Wherever I may Roam’ and of course ‘Nothing Else Matters’ were flawless and the powerful ‘Sad But True’ got every single person in the enormous crowd pumping their fists and straining their vocal chords,
An excessive pyro and laser show back an equally impressive rendition of ‘One’ for the bands encore with a couple more quality songs to bring a good day at Download to a close.

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